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Car Cameras and Black Boxes in Canberra?

My wife and experience the daily nerve racking experience of Canberra commuting. It seems every second day at least we see another accident. Seven deaths in Canberra roads this year, and I dread to think of how many serious injuries or even insurance nightmares and work interruptions people are suffering every day. Fatalities are only the tip of the reported ice berg. So we’ve had enough.

One day I accept that one of these idiots who cut people off, overtake on bends, routinely break the speed limit or beep at you for doing the speed limit, drive right on your tail as you have to slow down for a traffic jam – will hit us. And when they do, I intend to nail them hard in court with no chance of weasling out of it.

So I’m looking for car camera and black boxes. A quick search on Google throws up many options – it seems we are not alone and a whole industry is springing up around collecting evidence on dangerous drivers.

Does anyone have any advice on the technical or legal side?

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If anything can we Youtube footage of these idiots and hopefully spur others to do the same, potentially leading to a preventive complaint before they kill or injure an innocent victim? Could we start a Youtube channel and tag by number plate?

It would seem that even $400 is a small price to pay for conclusive evidence in the name of road safety.

And we don’t understand it, it’s not like Canberra is world famous for its long commute times and traffic jams and poor road conditions. So what gives? Why does it seem there are so many on the road with bad attitude?

What’s Your opinion?

The odd time I get off my pushie and abuse the environment in the lazy person’s machine, I find it quite a relaxing experience. Almost never strike any of the hoonie type behaviour you’re suggesting is the norm. Perhaps that’s because most of my driving is outside peak periods?

Anyway, bro, chill. Per km you’re actually very safe on Canberra’s roads. Adhering to speed limits and copping a tradie’s horn isn’t actually dangerous, and if you accept that tradies are little children dressed up as big people and ignore their tanties, you’ll find that once they’ve had their little tantie and moved on, you can relax.

…or for similar money, attend a defensive driving course. Skills like having the right attitude behind the wheel (“no, my taxes paid for this right hand lane and I’ll travel along it as slowly as I want”), looking out for trouble (hazard perception including a car zig-zagging in lanes behind you) and basically doing everything YOU can to avoid a crash (rather than having the ability to smugly say “I was in the right” in a hospital bed) are worth much more than a GoPro, an internet connection and a chip on your shoulder.

….. Cops aren’t interested in bad/dangerous/illegal driving unless they witness it in person so it would be a waste of time going to see them with the footage. ……..
Not even sure if insurance companies would use such videos as evidence in a claim.

Are you sure that this is correct? Wasn’t the Jim’s mowing guy charged for hitting that cyclist based on video footage? And I’m pretty sure that an insurance company would be very interested in video footage if they could try to use it (at least as supporting evidence) to recover costs against a third party (surely it would be as good as or better than photographic evidence taken at the scene).

Cyclists are increasingly using helmet-mounted or handlebar mounted cameras such as the GoPro to provide evidence of bad driving should an incident occur. These cameras are waterproof, shockproof, use any size SD card for memory (4GB provides about 1 hour) and if no incident happens, simply wipe the card and start afresh.

I recently started a website called BikeSee.com for cyclists to post their video’s (via Youtube). Embryonic at this stage but fee free to post your videos.

What do you hope to acheive with all this video footage? Cops aren’t interested in bad/dangerous/illegal driving unless they witness it in person so it would be a waste of time going to see them with the footage. Youtube already has a gazillion videos of bad/dangerous/illegal driving, your examples would have to pretty special to rate a mention anywhere and what outcome do you expect to get from it?

Not even sure if insurance companies would use such videos as evidence in a claim.

There was a website a while back called ratemyplate that was a forum of sorts where people posted descriptions of dodgy drivers along with vehicle and rego details (didn’t have images or videos). It was shut down, presumably because of privacy issues. There was no moderation so anyone could post up any report true or false about anybody else they happened to not to like.

Look – I’m the first to agree there are plenty of dicks on the road. But at the same time it’s crazy to go spending money in the hope you’re abused on the road. It’s no way to live. Ignore it the best you can and chill out.